Anthropic Says Its AI Searched 1.9 Billion Proteins Alone and Found a New Enzyme System

Anthropic’s Claude models spent 21.5 hours running their own experiments through a database of 1.9 billion proteins and came back with something nobody had described before: a new enzyme system inside bacteriophage DNA that behaves like a simpler, possibly reprogrammable cousin of CRISPR. Amazon opened its seller tools to outside AI agents for the first time, letting sellers run their storefronts through Claude instead of Amazon’s own dashboard. A Portuguese-British drone maker raised $580 million on the strength of its record in Ukraine, and two Indian shooters broke an Asian record on their way to gold at the Asian Games.

The enzyme system nobody had catalogued

Anthropic formed a life sciences research group in the spring of 2026, running a small Bay Area lab that works only with material safe enough to handle without special containment. This week it published its first result. Left to search a database of roughly 1.9 billion protein clusters on its own, Claude ran an autonomous campaign lasting 21.5 hours across 949 separate agent sessions and 215.6 million tokens. It screened more than 200,000 reverse transcriptase enzymes, flagged about 3,500 candidate systems worth a second look, and narrowed those down to 20 that its human overseers considered genuinely new.

One of those 20 became the headline finding: a system Anthropic is calling array-associated reverse transcriptases, or ART. It sits in the DNA of bacteriophages, the viruses that infect bacteria, and has three parts: a reverse transcriptase enzyme, a partner gene next to it, and a long stretch of evenly spaced DNA repeats. Early lab experiments show that repeat array produces short, distinct pieces of RNA, the same basic pattern CRISPR uses to target specific sequences of genetic code.

Anthropic has not worked out what ART actually does. The company has posted a preprint of its findings and is inviting outside scientists to propose experiments on it. Feng Zhang, the MIT researcher who helped turn CRISPR into a gene-editing tool, was not involved in the work but called it “an exciting example of how AI agents can contribute to biological discovery,” adding that the findings were “genuinely intriguing” and merited further study.

Now sellers can run Amazon through Claude

Amazon used its Accelerate seller conference this week to open Seller Central’s data to outside AI systems for the first time, starting with a US beta plugin for Anthropic’s Claude and Amazon’s own assistant, Quick. Sellers who connect it, a process Amazon says takes about 60 seconds and no coding, can ask it plain questions like which products are running low on stock or what would happen to sales if they raised prices five percent, and get answers pulled straight from their listings, inventory and analytics.

Because the connection works in both directions, the assistant can also act on the account: updating a listing, changing a price, adjusting inventory settings. Amazon says sellers choose which categories of data the plugin can reach and have to approve each action before it happens, managed through a new “Manage Agents” page in Seller Central. Every primary account holder gets a free year of Quick Plus through the end of 2026, and Amazon says the beta will expand beyond the US in time.

The drone maker that logged 50,000 hours over Ukraine

Tekever, a Lisbon and London based maker of AI-guided surveillance drones, announced the first close of a $580 million Series D funding round this week, valuing the company at $6.4 billion. UC Investments, the University of California’s investment arm, led the round alongside Baillie Gifford, in what UC Investments said was its first direct investment in a European company. Merlyn Advisors joined as a new backer alongside existing investors Crescent Cove, Ventura Capital and Iberis Capital, and Tekever said further closings are expected in the coming months.

The company says its drones have flown more than 50,000 hours over Ukraine since 2022, and the round follows the UK Ministry of Defence’s decision to pick Tekever to build CORVUS, a new surveillance system for the British Army worth up to £400 million over ten years. Tekever said the new money will go toward expanding its footprint, building out its industrial capacity and pursuing acquisitions.

A record that stood for eight months, broken by India

India’s Suruchi Singh and Kamaljeet won gold in the mixed 10 metre air pistol team event at the Aichi-Nagoya Asian Games, shooting an Asian record combined score of 484.6. The mark beat the previous record of 481.3, set by an Uzbek pair earlier this year at the Asian Shooting Championships in New Delhi. South Korea took silver with 478.0 and Iran won bronze with 415.8.

It was India’s first Asian Games gold in this event, an improvement on the silver that Sarabjot Singh and Divya TS won at Hangzhou in 2023. Suruchi is competing in her first Asian Games.

Four games, four wins, and a place in the semifinals

India’s women’s hockey team beat host nation Japan 3-1 in Pool B at the Aichi-Nagoya Games, its fourth win in four matches, and secured a place in the semifinals with a game to spare. Lalremsiami Hmarzote opened the scoring in the fifth minute, Ishika Chaudhary doubled the lead late in the second quarter, and Navneet Kaur made it 3-0 in the 36th minute with a scoop shot over the Japanese goalkeeper. Japan pulled one back through Shiho Kobayakawa in the 46th minute, but India held on.

The win puts India top of Pool B with 12 points from four matches and guarantees at least a top-two finish in the group.